This is a sort of diary Simon Gray kept while in rehearsals for a play he wrote, The Common Pursuit, which Harold Pinter directed. Nice to find they had trouble casting their play, too, finding the final actor only 4 days before the first rehearsal. Also Gray says he’s always depressed after a first read-through, and so must everyone else be--the actors convinced the director and producer are frantically recasting, writer convinced the actors are calling their agents to complain, etc.
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| pinter and gray |
I thought I’d like to keep a similar journal for Skylight, though as an actor in the show my thoughts are so insular I’m sure they’ll be more embarrassing than educational in the years to come. Still, I like the acting process, I like to think about it. I have a fear that I’ll stop acting, for one reason or another, and never have the chance to write things down again. I don’t trust in memory at all. As an actor I really have hardly any memory. It is all fire in the moment and all is forgiven, forgotten, and lost by the time I’ve finished the post-show martini.
Gray and Pinter go for a drink after each rehearsal, usually with the cast, which I envy and like. Gray says Pinter is a very English playwright and it's a shame he is accused of being Balkan and mysterious. Reverence. Ugh.
At the end, Gray decides he’ll never keep a production journal again because he found he’d mostly recorded the parts he would have preferred to forget, and would have forgotten, were it not for the journal.
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